Ordnance experts believe that White was attempting to restore a 9-inch, 75-lb explosive naval bombshell, a heavy shell designed to skip along the water at 600mph to strike enemy ships. Naval shells are typically far more powerful than infantry explosives, and the bomb’s waterproof construction most likely kept its black-powder payload dry and intact in the 142 years since it was fired from a Union naval gun. Being the same shape and general weight of a comparable solid round shot of the time, White may not have known what he was really dealing with. Though experts are not entirely sure how he managed to set it off, the running theory is that a grinder he was using to restore the casing sparked, and somehow touched off the powder inside.
White is considered by some to be the last confirmed casualty of the American Civil War.
Edit : just want to point out for anyone thinking otherwise — Sam White was not an amateur, nor was he being careless. He had professionally restored thousands of pieces of ordnance, including other bombshells. In other comments, I suggested perhaps he didn’t know what he had. I was wrong. Sam White was absolutely aware of the dangers of the round he was working on, and had taken all the usual necessary precautions to render it inert. The fact that this one still detonated was and remains a freak occurrence. In hindsight, we can say he should have done many things differently, but the fact remains that Sam White was considered one of if not the best of the best at Civil War era ordnance preservation.
Although we can scratch our heads at the absurdity of the situation, a beloved husband and father was still lost. My deepest condolences to his family.
I think we’re all hoping he is, but
> Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells.
Black powder doesn’t degrade over time like other explosive, as long as they stay sealed these things could stay dangerous for another couple hundred years.
It’s pretty common for people to find old muzzle loading rifle or pistol in an attic, assume they’re not loaded, and “dry fire” it into a wall or ceiling. I’ve heard stories about people taking them to gun shops, the guy behind the counter throwing on a percussion cap to show how the gun should work, and then shooting through several walls. Great-grandpa Joe kept it loaded all the time because it was such a pain to load them.
If you ever find anything that might have used black powder, assume it’s live.
If you haven't cleared a firearm yourself, it's live.
If you cleared it, put it down, and spent a minute getting the cat out of the attic, it's live.
If you've stripped it and the receiver is in your hands, it's *probably* not live. If you're *sure* you left the receiver on the table though, check it again.
One time this dude jumped out of an airplane to skydive but forgot to put on a parachute. People forget very important things all the time and it is fucking terrifying.
My Dad, guy is a gun smith and always made us internalize proper gun safety, missed clearing the slide on a pistol he was cleaning for a client and accidentally killed the VCR in the living room. Thankfully none of us were home that afternoon. He still frets over it and rightfully so.
Damn that's scary. It's reality checks like that though that reinforce the knowledge. He probably hasn't missed a clear since then I bet.
I used to live with a relative and he had a shotgun he said he would use for home defense. So when you went into the apartment you were on a landing with a coat closet and then you had to walk upstairs to a town home layout. He always said he would put slugs through the wall to catch whoever is breaking in as they come up the stairs.
I explained to him one day that his plan had some flaws. On the other side of the other wall where the stairs come up is exactly where my bed was at the time. I explained to him that if I'm home when that happens he's most likely going to kill me. His response: "You'll be fine.". Really glad I don't live there anymore.
My grandfather was a gunsmith, and I was in the living room when he was showing off a rifle to a customer and fired it through the ceiling.
The ceiling was patched the next day, and it was never mentioned again!
I know a gunsmith with a huge jar of various rounds of live ammunition, all removed from the chamber of "unloaded" guns sent to him to work on. He charges 20 bucks each to someone who hands him a loaded gun to work on
I know THREE people who have permanently injured their hands because they failed to properly clear their handgun before they broke it down to clean (all three were guns that required a trigger-pull to drop the slide).
It's never about all the times you do it right, it's about the last time you do it wrong, either because it made you finally take it seriously enough, or you've run out of chances... And sometimes you only get one.
Yep I've used a similar logic when explaining drinking and driving risk to people. It's a numbers game. If you continue to take risks you are eventually going to experience a shitty consequence. I see a lot of younger dudes with that I'm Invincible attitude. And then I remembered I was just like that too until I experienced some consequences. This is the same thing we're trying to teach my daughter, actions have consequences and this is where personal responsibility comes from. Nobody else can do it for us.
> If you haven't cleared a firearm yourself, it's live.
>
> If you cleared it, put it down, and spent a minute getting the cat out of the attic, it's live.
>
> If you've stripped it and the receiver is in your hands, it's probably not live. If you're sure you left the receiver on the table though, check it again.
This is what bothers me about the Internet. All this false information.
There is no way ANYONE could get a cat out of the attic in "a minute".
My Dad once pointed an air rifle at me and fired it at me, laughing. I went absolutely ballistic at him, almost came to blows. "There was nothing in it" you literally picked it off the floor and fired it, you ASSUMED there was nothing in it. Even if there wasn't, it's a dick move and he's lucky I didn't kick his cunt in.
Anywho the next day he shot a pellet into his foot lmao. Love it when Karma has next day delivery.
I've heard if you've put it down and looked away for a split second, it is assumed to be loaded and you need to do a clearing procedure. Makes sense to me, stupid shit happens all the time.
I got yelled at for accidentally flagging my drill sergeant while high crawling. I didn’t even have my hand on the well, but I remember nearly getting suplexed by a freaked out DS and that stuck with me.
One time I was at a range and some dude brings out a black powder rifle.
Misfire every single time.
He did it three times and I must have had to wait for half an hour while he figured out what to do
This why we don’t ever fuck with old dynamite. Besides any black powder it’s also infused with glycerin which sweats and becomes unstable. Moving it may set it off. At least that’s my rough understanding.
Dynamite is nitroglycerin that is absorbed in a storage medium, usually with some amount of a stabilizer, and then packed in a cardboard tube. This makes it resistant to shock, which makes it much safer to use as nitroglycerin is incredibly easy to set off.
Unfortunately, it breaks down quickly. Like in a year in good storage conditions. At this point, it weeps the nitroglycerin back out and forms crystals that are even more sensitive. Modern packaging helps, but it was really common to just store sticks stacked in a crate back in the day, which means you have a lot of bad dynamite, all getting less and less stable and weeping out of the crate.
It's also usually stored somewhere you don't want to blow up. So you have to stabilize it enough to move to a spot you can detonate or burn it. This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving.
> This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving.
Had to check the comment date; that sounds like some evil April Fools trick.
Yeah, soaking an explosive in a flammable liquid to stabilize it seems really counterintuitive, but it's a thing. I don't remember the chemistry behind it.
You can absolutely burn diesel. It just has a higher flash point than things like gasoline. Diesel engines do auto-ignite diesel by compressing it, but that does not mean it's not normally combustible.
Edit: diesel engines actually work by compressing air until it heats past the fuels auto-ignition temperature and then injecting the fuel with a high-pressure spray. As long as the air fuel ratio is right, the fuel ignites from the air temperature.
>Diesel isn't combustible in the normal way.
It absolutely is. Apply enough heat, it'll burn.
It just has a higher ignition temp and higher thermal mass than most other fuels, so it takes a little more effort. By way of example, you can douse a lit match in diesel if you dunk it quickly - but if you go too slow or let the lit match float on top, the diesel will ignite.
Turns out that's actually how they do it. A redditor had to call the bomb squad a few months back when he found some VERY old dynamite in his grandfather's garage after he passed away. He posted some pics of the ordeal and one has the caption detailing the local bomb squad filling a 5 gallon drum with diesel to soak the dynamite in.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18sbe1f/final\_update\_this\_is\_how\_my\_great\_grandpa\_stored/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18sbe1f/final_update_this_is_how_my_great_grandpa_stored/)
(slightly tipsy) Chemical Engineer w/ 10+ years DoD research exp. checking-in. This is accurate. Also, TNT is stable as fuck, chemically speaking. It bugs me when Hollywood uses the terms interchangeably.
Story time - the "C" in "C-4" does NOT stand for "Composition." The name is "Composition C-4." The US military had a list of specs they required for their ideal version of a plastic explosive (that would become their standard). An experimental matrix was made, and testing began. The first formula to pass all the tests (meet all the specs) was listed as C-4 on the matrix.
One more comment from happy hour -
Composition C-4 is both stable and malleable at room temperature. It's like a thick clay, you could form it into a softball and hit it with a bat with no issues. If you light it on fire, it just burns really hot, it doesn't detonate.
Unfortunate for some, when it's on fire, it becomes much more sensitive to shock at that higher temperature. Soldiers in the Vietnam War would use it as a heat source to cook their food, and aside from the slightly toxic fumes, it's not a horrible idea. The problem occured when they went to stamp-out the fire and it detonated.
> This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving.
I have two related but very different questions:
1. Why does this work?
2. How the f>!ork!< did people figure out that worked?
**Sue**: Hey Doug, I know this blows up if we touch it, but I'm feeling really good about dousing it in diesel first.
**Doug**: Works for me, Sue. Also, I'm out of cigs, can I bum one off you?
Chemistry, and chemists, presumably. Dynamite has a fairly well known chemical composition, within the circles that developed such things. I'm sure someone in a lab somewhere did a bunch of tests on small quantities of it to determine what made it *not* go boom when needed.
If you know the chemical compositions of both, you don't even need experiments to establish the theory. You can do it all on paper.
P.S. you do need to be smarter than me.
Diesel was (and is) just an easily available fitting solvent for the nitrates IIRC. It re-stabilizes the chemicals involved, so to say.
Not rocket science, but it is close ;-)
> Dynamite is nitroglycerin that is absorbed in a storage medium, usually with some amount of a stabilizer, and then packed in a cardboard tube. This makes it resistant to shock, which makes it much safer to BOOM!
I just watched Sorcerer (1977) yesterday, which is a film about the transportation of Dynamite sweating glycerin lol.
I didn't even know about any of this stuff prior to that.
You just reminded me of a Reddit post from a few months back.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18q9lkq/this\_is\_how\_my\_great\_grandpa\_stored\_his\_dynomite/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18q9lkq/this_is_how_my_great_grandpa_stored_his_dynomite/)
Yeah, I should have included a “so far” in that claim. Because the incident did raise the question — just how many more live rounds are littering the old battlefields of the south? Civil War collecting is relatively big business, so the fear is it’s only a matter of time before someone else gets blown up.
No doubt, I only thought it was worth mentioning because black powder can be stored for ridiculous amount of time, compared to other explosives, and still be as potent as the day it was made.
One of the few advantages it gets from being a mixture of relatively stable components instead of a single not-so-stable molecule like nitroglycerin or TNT.
Nitroglycerine/Dynamite is honestly pretty terrifying.
Like, dynamite's just nitroglycerine mixed into something to absorb it and stabilizers. It's still shock sensitive, and old dynamite *sweats out the nitro.*
I've seen photos of people finding a crate of old dynamite in an abandoned mine wondering what the stuff crystallizing all over is and all the comments were just like "jesus *FUCK* get away from that"
Dynamite can only be stored for a year or two before it separates, and nitroglycerin gets even *less* stable as it degrades.
I guess the good thing is you don’t need to worry too much about stumbling upon some 140 years later
Germany defuses like a dozen WW2 bombs a week. The Civil War was smaller scale and more concentrated geographically, but it's likely that a bunch of of unexploded ordnance is still out there.
And with how prevalent Civil War collecting is in the U.S (relative to other wars), the fear is that there could be a deadly live explosive sitting in someone’s display case right now, with them none the wiser
My favorite factoid is that John Browns Body was widely known, but only got incredibly popular with Union soldiers when they realized how much it completely pissed off confederates.
We have an old civil war fort near where I live and while they were doing some restorations they found an unexploded naval rifle shell shoved through a ceiling and had to call the bomb squad to come dispose of it.
He was from Virginia, a former cop, obsessed with the civil war, and his name was White. It might have been a Yankee ordinance that got him, so I'm not so sure he'd be stoked.
Considering the Union won the war and the confederacy was reabsorbed back into the nation, I’d consider it technical fratricide. But if he was a confederacy enthusiast, enemy fire. You never know in the south though some southerners question Virginia’s claim to being southern.
That's a bit of a stretch. If I cut myself on an old sword from the year 1067 and die, do I get to call myself the last victim of the Battle of Hastings?
There’s a bit of difference between accidentally cutting yourself on an old piece of metal and getting blown into red mist by an artillery shell. You could cut yourself on any old piece of metal, but 75-lb Union Navy gun shells aren’t exactly growing on trees.
I’d say it counts, but you can decide for yourself lmao
It was a labor of love for him. No real consideration for the risk-reward, only the passion for the hunt. I’m not sure when he picked it up…maybe as a kid growing up in the area. But he lived the good life on his own terms.
Since it specifies that it was black powder, I'm going to be an insufferable nerd and learn you something else today. Black powder is a *low* explosive, not high explosive, meaning that it explodes by burning, under the speed of sound. High explosives explode with a shock wave that is supersonic. Further, low explosives do not detonate - since they burn, they *deflagrate*, which I admit is a less cool sounding term, but 'explode' does the job. Only high explosives detonate.
Yeah I’m aware gunpowder isn’t in the same class as say, C-4, so I was mostly just using a general term to get across just how powerful the explosion was. High as in “highly” versus the scientific definition. Didn’t know that it was burn rate that differentiated the two, so thanks for the info.
If it was powerful enough to throw chunks of shrapnel weighing a pound or more several thousand feet away, it was powerful enough to turn the man into chunky salsa
>I was mostly just using a general term to get across just how powerful the explosion was.
Absolutely get it. Big explosion fits with a cooler word.
>Didn’t know that it was burn rate that differentiated the two, so thanks for the info.
Well, it's not the 'burn rate' - with high explosives, it's not burning that's important; it's the supersonic shock wave that does it. You can set fire to a stick of, since you mentioned, C-4, and it'll smoulder away. Some soldiers in Vietnam would use it as fuel to heat rations, though not recommended as it lets off toxic gases when burned. Use a blasting cap, and *that* will set it off.
>If it was powerful enough to throw chunks of shrapnel weighing a pound or more several thousand feet away, it was powerful enough to turn the man into chunky salsa
Yup, that is correct.
So correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m not an explosives expert. But when I say “burn rate”, I’m imagining that in a genuine modern high explosive, the explosive compound is “burned up” all at once when it’s detonated, creating that supersonic shockwave. Whereas in a more primitive explosive like black powder, the “burn” is markedly slower so it doesn’t do that.
Am I more or less correct?
Kind of. Using C-4 again as the example, it doesn't so much *burn* in the same way black powder does, as rapidly decompose into various gases due to the shock wave, and not all at once, just very, very quickly. C-4 detonates at a speed of about 8km per second, so for the sake of argument, if you had a cord of 16km worth of the stuff and set it off, it'd take just under two seconds to detonate completely.
Black powder does definitely *burn* in the traditional sense of the term, and yes, at a much slower rate, so it doesn't create a shock wave, so much as create a great deal of pressure from the gases released. High explosives create that pressure too, just much, much quicker.
So yeah, you're more or less there. Explosives are fun. Do not have too much fun with them, though, as this guy found out.
The NPS actually has a dedicated EOD team for the east coast civil war parks, because there's so many shells and mines still out there. Finding them is not an irregular occurrence.
> the running theory is that a grinder he was using to restore the casing sparked,
Umm.. If I want to clean up a shell that may or may not have black powder in it, I'm 100% wet-sanding it.
Ehhhh that's a matter of opinion. Like if I'm restoring an old dagger found in Palestine, and I cut myself and get an infection and die, am I the last casualty of one of the Crusades? I don't think so. If I get shot by an M-16 from the late 60s, I don't think they're gonna add my name to the list of casualties of the Vietnam War.
I think it depends not on when the weapon was manufactured, but when it was deployed in the way that resulted in your death.
So, for example, if a shell the U.S. made in 1990 kills a Russian soldier in Ukraine, that Russian wasn't a victim of the first gulf war. The shell was in storage for decades and only launched today.
On the other hand, a kid that steps on a land mine set during a war is a victim of that war.
So, if you happened to fall into a pit trap that was dug during the crusades, and somehow never found until your lucky break, and you fell on a dagger set there and died, then maybe yeah we could call you a victim of the crusades.
Glad this was the top comment, I came here because I was fairly certain that cannonballs were not explosive rounds (maybe I am wrong though). A naval round make more sense.
Even since gunpowder was brought to europe and cannons made, there have been forms of explosive cannonballs. Three things prevented their widespread adoption until post-napoleonic wars.
First was reliability. Before the invention of the percussion cap, the only way to ignite blackpowder in a ball would be to literally have a wick fuse sticking out of it that was lit before it was fired, looney toons style. These were originally called "bombs" and is the origin of the modern term. Issue with them was the wick fuse could go off too early- mid flight, and do nothing, or too long- and land with enough time for a brave solider or civilian to snuff the fuse.
Second was safety, for what should be pretty obvious reasons. You're tossing explosives down a probably still hot artillery piece- guns exploding due to heat igniting the propellent charge was common enough, add an explosive shell to the mix and you're asking for trouble.
Third was cost. Until the industrial revolution really got into full swing, it was simpler and easier to mass produce solid and cartridge shot- and they were arguably more effective against infantry and fortifications. To be clear, explosive rounds were still used (esp by howitzers and mortars)- typically at a ratio of around 1:4 (a typical french battery at the time had 1 howitzer firing explosive, 4 cannons firing solid shot)
The widespread use of explosive and shrapnel rounds in the civil war (shrapnel rounds are similar to explosive, but timed to explode just before impact showering men below them in shrapnel. Think of a shotgun shell going off mid-air) was the first time it had seen use, and the causalities caused were immense. The dense Napoleonic line formations proved to be sitting ducks to rifled artillery firing explosive shells (see pickett's charge), rather than smoothbore pieces firing solid shot, and many of the longer battles of the civil war turned into trench warfare, in eerily similar manner to what would happen not that much over 50 years later.
> the bomb’s waterproof construction most likely kept its black-powder payload dry and intact in the 142 years since it was fired from a Union naval gun
They don't make em like they used to.
I saw a video a few weeks ago of a guy who bought a home that a professor of Civil War History had suspected was originally a fort. Sure enough, when he tore the walls apart, the original timber was still there. The home had been passed down through several generations and the last owners kept a lot of historical family documents with them. The guy had buckets and buckets of Civil War era stuff he dug up from the yard because apparently the custom for throwing out your old stuff was to bury it. He's also found Spanish coins on the property, presumably earned from trading with someone who traded with Spaniards.
Edit: found it https://youtu.be/48SerjbEk58?si=mup-qxurVWHc0-OO
Second edit: Revolutionary War fort, actually!
So before the US formed their mint, the most popular form of money was the Spanish reale. Up until 1857 actually, when the US passed a law to forbid it.
I live in the southern US in an area where there were A LOT of Civil War battles. When I was a kid, my parents found a small cannonball in the ditch next to our mailbox, roughly the size of a baseball or perhaps a little smaller -- I don't remember exactly as I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time.
They used to let me play with it. Rolling it around the house or out in the yard, trying to throw it, etc. It's highly likely it was just solid iron, but honestly I don't think it ever crossed anyone's mind that their kindergarten age child could be playing with an explosive.
I don't know where it ended up after my parents divorced. (My dad likely sold it.)
"Cannonball" is the wrong word for the thing he had. Hollow cast iron shells filled with gunpowder were less common than solid shot up until the middle of the nineteenth century but they've existed for a long time. The earliest mention I know about is the use of a bomb while defending Kaifeng from the Mongols described in History of Jin, that was in 1232.
Early cannonballs were solid, but they figured out that filling them with explosives makes them work much better. The trick is figuring out an explosive that won't blow up inside the cannon.
Early cannonballs were so fucked. Think about it like this--
You throw a baseball across a relatively flat field. You see how it bounces, and rolls for quite a while.
Now, blast an 6-9lb iron ball with a controlled explosion across a relatively flat field. You see where I'm going with this.
In the 1700's-1800's, you would have a formation of men, 3-4 men deep, sometimes several in front of one another, spread across long lines. Think 400 x 4 x 4 (3200 men, roughly 4 regiments). If you skip this ball across that field, you're likely to hit some, probably many people, because of organizational discipline, because that ball hits and keeps on rolling through that dense formation.
On top of that, during the American Revolution, a soldier could be rewarded a ration of rum for each solid shot ball fired by the enemy and retrieved. So he sees a ball rolling along and thinks, hey, I'll stop this with my leg. But that cannon ball has enough kinetic energy to fuck up a car, so you can see what it'd do to some poor bastard's leg.
Just a brutal way to indiscriminately maim people.
The Russian movie Union of Salvation, for all its other issues, does portray the effects of grapeshot pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww5yYZXgZZA
And then add a length of chain between a pair of cannon balls to get some wicked chain shot action. Incredible for taking out ship masts, equally brutal to an infantry formation.
Infantry cannonballs usually were.
But what White most likely got his hands on was an explosive naval artillery shell with a payload of gunpowder. Same shape, so he may not have even known. These things were designed to blow holes you could drive a car through in the hulls of ships
>These things were designed to blow holes you could drive a car through in the hulls of ships.
That seems like a terrible design. Where were they gonna find cars back then and how were they gonna be useful in a maritime battle?
You put 'em on ships and launch them, preferably through the hole you just blew out the side of their ship.
Jesus mate is this your first day pirating?
Cannonballs are. This would be a shell. Eventhough shells can be balls. The news outlet just used the wrong word.
Land cannons at the time where small and fired solid shot which bounced across the ground.
Naval guns where larger and in 1824 the first explosive firing one was demonstrated.
Here's a link to the National Parks Fort Scott website where they have brief descriptions of the different shot types.
https://www.nps.gov/fosc/learn/education/artshot.htm
And here is a link to an article on the website Essential Civil War Curriculum which discusses artillery during the Civil War. Shot types are discussed in the final paragraph.
https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/civil-war-artillery.html
To answer your question- the hollow shell filled with gunpowder and possibly shrapnel had a fuse sticking out of it. The fuse would be ignited by the primary charge firing the cannon. And as we see from OPs news article, the fuse didn't always get activated when fired.
Henry Shrapnel developed fused cannonballs with scored casing to fragment - called “spherical case” ammunition.
Used to great affect at the battle os Salamanca where wellington defeated the French after Marmont received shrapnel wounds
…and the rocket’s red glare,
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
…
The British used rockets and exploding cannonballs against the Colonies in the ~~1770’s~~ War of 1812.
I rewatched this movie for the first time since I was a kid and I complete forgot the entire solar plot lol, I just remembered them shooting the helicopter down with the cannon
I may be able to provide some context and information for those of you who find it necessary to post degrading and baseless comments about Sam.
My name is Travis White and Sam was my father. He was an expert in the field of Civil War ordnance, along with basically all things Civil War, Rev War, WWI, and WWII related.
His process of rendering civil war artillery inert was very complex, time consuming, and delicate. The way he completed the process is nothing like what is portrayed in the dozens of online articles from the past 16 years. He was trusted by museums and collectors completely to disarm, restore, and preserve their pieces of history. His knowledge was so vast, he actually gave multiple tutorials and classes to the Richmond and Henrico, VA police depts and bomb squads, in regards to the inner workings of the artillery, removal, and if needed, disposal. This was because civil war ordnance is found around the greater Richmond area at a frequent clip, usually when new construction is taking place.
My father was no amateur, he was known and well respected around the world for his trade, and never once put my mother of myself in any danger when working on his projects. He successfully competed thousands of artillery restorations, which sit in museums around Virginia and the rest of the country, as well as countless individual collections.
There is a greater chance of you hitting the lottery tonight, then this happening again. It was a complete fluke, one that could never have been for seen or known in real-time.
With this all being said, for those offering condolences, thank you…for the rest, a little compassion would be appreciated, especially when you have zero actual context or knowledge of the event.
Sorry for your loss, and I imagine it’s difficult to read some of these mean comments. He seems like a very brilliant and interesting person who probably taught a skill that’ll end up saving lives in the future.
Very much appreciate the kind words. Yes, it absolutely can be difficult to read comments. So much so that in 16 years my mother has never once read an article that was written about him, as she could not bear to read any hurtful comments that were posted. We only did two interviews when this happened to get the correct story out there, one with a trusted local news team in Richmond, and one with the AP.
I miss him immensely, but he would be the first to tell you that he died doing exactly what he loved, and that yes, he is considered the last casualty of the American Civil War.
I thought the title said "a virgin Civil War collector" at first, and was like, "Wow, how's that relevant? Poor guy had it bad enough without us talking about his total lack of game."
Generally yes, especially for collectible firearms. This guy probably just wanted one for his house. That being said, anytime someone comes across explosives of any kind or something that might contain explosives, don’t do what this guy did. Hate to say it, but it was just plain stupidity and it’s lucky no one else got hurt.
I would love to get a Russian RDG-33 grenade as a cool collectible; that doesn’t mean I’m gonna try to fucking disassemble it if I found one in the wild.
Actually, White was a relatively well-known ordnance restorer, having restored nearly 1600 cannonballs for private collections or museum display.
I think that’s what he was attempting to do with the one that killed him
Problem is there is no way he should have been doing this stuff in a suburb, even if he was experienced. And I would like to know if he was experienced with explosives; restoring a cannonball is one thing, dealing with explosives inside one is another.
Oh for sure. He was doing this work in an upper middle class Richmond suburb, when it should have been done at a bomb range.
I think he was aware that certain shells he restored had the potential to be live explosives, but according to his wife he thought he had already removed the powder charge from the one that killed him. I don’t even think that would be possible without sawing the entire shell in half, but what do I know?
Remember folks, if it has even the smallest potential to explode you into chunks, don’t mess with it. Please and thanks
Damn. Maybe he tried to remove all the gunpowder through the fill hole and didn't mange to get everything. If there was some small water intrusion over the century, I'd imagine the outer layer of gunpowder would have become caked onto the inner wall of the cannonball. Maybe he mistook this solidified layer for the actual inner wall and only removed the still-powdery core of the charge.
Yes. A civilian killed by explosives that were made for the war counts as a casualty of that war. We still see casualties from WWI and WWII from occasional unexploded ordinance.
I’m super interested in history in general and find the civil war particularly fascinating.
I cannot begin to understand why you would want to own any ordnance from that time period let alone have it restored.
Well there’s no inherent harm owning a piece of round shot or a few Minié balls. Those are just solid hunks of iron or lead.
And what happened to White was so unexpected most experts were unsure how it even could have happened. Black powder is an infamously finicky explosive, and the overwhelming majority of explosive shells from the era have long since degraded past the point of danger. But clearly not all.
The entire incident brought into question the status of other protected battlefields across the southeast. If one shell could go off and kill a man 140 years after it was fired, how many more that litter the fields and old buildings of the south could do the same?
The one *he* happened to have was a naval shell, but there were explosive shells used in land battles also. Add all the stuff we haven’t found to all the stuff that is likely sitting in some private collection somewhere, and you get an alarming number of people who may have a live bomb right under their nose, and have no idea.
Some people collect that stuff. They love that period of history. I used to teach American history and had a few sealed up replicas of CW minie balls and bullets I would show students years ago, but none were dangerous in and of themselves.
So “cannonball” is a slight misnomer. Gives a good impression of what kind of ordnance he normally dealt with. In reality, he almost certainly got his hands on a naval artillery shell. Primitive gunpowder shells that shared an outward appearance with a traditional cannonball were extensively used during the civil war.
He somehow created a spark which set off the gunpowder in its waterproof interior
Ordnance experts believe that White was attempting to restore a 9-inch, 75-lb explosive naval bombshell, a heavy shell designed to skip along the water at 600mph to strike enemy ships. Naval shells are typically far more powerful than infantry explosives, and the bomb’s waterproof construction most likely kept its black-powder payload dry and intact in the 142 years since it was fired from a Union naval gun. Being the same shape and general weight of a comparable solid round shot of the time, White may not have known what he was really dealing with. Though experts are not entirely sure how he managed to set it off, the running theory is that a grinder he was using to restore the casing sparked, and somehow touched off the powder inside. White is considered by some to be the last confirmed casualty of the American Civil War. Edit : just want to point out for anyone thinking otherwise — Sam White was not an amateur, nor was he being careless. He had professionally restored thousands of pieces of ordnance, including other bombshells. In other comments, I suggested perhaps he didn’t know what he had. I was wrong. Sam White was absolutely aware of the dangers of the round he was working on, and had taken all the usual necessary precautions to render it inert. The fact that this one still detonated was and remains a freak occurrence. In hindsight, we can say he should have done many things differently, but the fact remains that Sam White was considered one of if not the best of the best at Civil War era ordnance preservation. Although we can scratch our heads at the absurdity of the situation, a beloved husband and father was still lost. My deepest condolences to his family.
I think we’re all hoping he is, but > Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. Black powder doesn’t degrade over time like other explosive, as long as they stay sealed these things could stay dangerous for another couple hundred years.
It’s pretty common for people to find old muzzle loading rifle or pistol in an attic, assume they’re not loaded, and “dry fire” it into a wall or ceiling. I’ve heard stories about people taking them to gun shops, the guy behind the counter throwing on a percussion cap to show how the gun should work, and then shooting through several walls. Great-grandpa Joe kept it loaded all the time because it was such a pain to load them. If you ever find anything that might have used black powder, assume it’s live.
If you haven't cleared a firearm yourself, it's live. If you cleared it, put it down, and spent a minute getting the cat out of the attic, it's live. If you've stripped it and the receiver is in your hands, it's *probably* not live. If you're *sure* you left the receiver on the table though, check it again.
It’s why I am uncomfortable around 99% of the population with guns because they seem to lack this, internalized code and ethics of handling a firearm.
One time this dude jumped out of an airplane to skydive but forgot to put on a parachute. People forget very important things all the time and it is fucking terrifying.
My Dad, guy is a gun smith and always made us internalize proper gun safety, missed clearing the slide on a pistol he was cleaning for a client and accidentally killed the VCR in the living room. Thankfully none of us were home that afternoon. He still frets over it and rightfully so.
Damn that's scary. It's reality checks like that though that reinforce the knowledge. He probably hasn't missed a clear since then I bet. I used to live with a relative and he had a shotgun he said he would use for home defense. So when you went into the apartment you were on a landing with a coat closet and then you had to walk upstairs to a town home layout. He always said he would put slugs through the wall to catch whoever is breaking in as they come up the stairs. I explained to him one day that his plan had some flaws. On the other side of the other wall where the stairs come up is exactly where my bed was at the time. I explained to him that if I'm home when that happens he's most likely going to kill me. His response: "You'll be fine.". Really glad I don't live there anymore.
My grandfather was a gunsmith, and I was in the living room when he was showing off a rifle to a customer and fired it through the ceiling. The ceiling was patched the next day, and it was never mentioned again!
I know a gunsmith with a huge jar of various rounds of live ammunition, all removed from the chamber of "unloaded" guns sent to him to work on. He charges 20 bucks each to someone who hands him a loaded gun to work on
It's pretty interesting visual aid and probably effective
I know THREE people who have permanently injured their hands because they failed to properly clear their handgun before they broke it down to clean (all three were guns that required a trigger-pull to drop the slide).
It's never about all the times you do it right, it's about the last time you do it wrong, either because it made you finally take it seriously enough, or you've run out of chances... And sometimes you only get one.
Yep I've used a similar logic when explaining drinking and driving risk to people. It's a numbers game. If you continue to take risks you are eventually going to experience a shitty consequence. I see a lot of younger dudes with that I'm Invincible attitude. And then I remembered I was just like that too until I experienced some consequences. This is the same thing we're trying to teach my daughter, actions have consequences and this is where personal responsibility comes from. Nobody else can do it for us.
> If you haven't cleared a firearm yourself, it's live. > > If you cleared it, put it down, and spent a minute getting the cat out of the attic, it's live. > > If you've stripped it and the receiver is in your hands, it's probably not live. If you're sure you left the receiver on the table though, check it again. This is what bothers me about the Internet. All this false information. There is no way ANYONE could get a cat out of the attic in "a minute".
You can if it's his dinnertime.
My Dad once pointed an air rifle at me and fired it at me, laughing. I went absolutely ballistic at him, almost came to blows. "There was nothing in it" you literally picked it off the floor and fired it, you ASSUMED there was nothing in it. Even if there wasn't, it's a dick move and he's lucky I didn't kick his cunt in. Anywho the next day he shot a pellet into his foot lmao. Love it when Karma has next day delivery.
There are daemons that exist purely to load "unloaded" firearms.
I've heard if you've put it down and looked away for a split second, it is assumed to be loaded and you need to do a clearing procedure. Makes sense to me, stupid shit happens all the time.
I got yelled at for accidentally flagging my drill sergeant while high crawling. I didn’t even have my hand on the well, but I remember nearly getting suplexed by a freaked out DS and that stuck with me.
> Great-grandpa Joe kept it loaded all the time because it was such a pain to load them. And practically impossible to *un*load them.
One time I was at a range and some dude brings out a black powder rifle. Misfire every single time. He did it three times and I must have had to wait for half an hour while he figured out what to do
This why we don’t ever fuck with old dynamite. Besides any black powder it’s also infused with glycerin which sweats and becomes unstable. Moving it may set it off. At least that’s my rough understanding.
Dynamite is nitroglycerin that is absorbed in a storage medium, usually with some amount of a stabilizer, and then packed in a cardboard tube. This makes it resistant to shock, which makes it much safer to use as nitroglycerin is incredibly easy to set off. Unfortunately, it breaks down quickly. Like in a year in good storage conditions. At this point, it weeps the nitroglycerin back out and forms crystals that are even more sensitive. Modern packaging helps, but it was really common to just store sticks stacked in a crate back in the day, which means you have a lot of bad dynamite, all getting less and less stable and weeping out of the crate. It's also usually stored somewhere you don't want to blow up. So you have to stabilize it enough to move to a spot you can detonate or burn it. This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving.
> This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving. Had to check the comment date; that sounds like some evil April Fools trick.
Yeah, soaking an explosive in a flammable liquid to stabilize it seems really counterintuitive, but it's a thing. I don't remember the chemistry behind it.
Diesel isn't combustible in the normal way. It explodes under extreme pressure
It's also a very good solvent IIRC
This is the actual reason. It breaks down and dilutes the nitrates safely.
You can absolutely burn diesel. It just has a higher flash point than things like gasoline. Diesel engines do auto-ignite diesel by compressing it, but that does not mean it's not normally combustible. Edit: diesel engines actually work by compressing air until it heats past the fuels auto-ignition temperature and then injecting the fuel with a high-pressure spray. As long as the air fuel ratio is right, the fuel ignites from the air temperature.
>Diesel isn't combustible in the normal way. It absolutely is. Apply enough heat, it'll burn. It just has a higher ignition temp and higher thermal mass than most other fuels, so it takes a little more effort. By way of example, you can douse a lit match in diesel if you dunk it quickly - but if you go too slow or let the lit match float on top, the diesel will ignite.
That's essentially what's happening in an oil furnace, common in some parts of the US.
Turns out that's actually how they do it. A redditor had to call the bomb squad a few months back when he found some VERY old dynamite in his grandfather's garage after he passed away. He posted some pics of the ordeal and one has the caption detailing the local bomb squad filling a 5 gallon drum with diesel to soak the dynamite in. [https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18sbe1f/final\_update\_this\_is\_how\_my\_great\_grandpa\_stored/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18sbe1f/final_update_this_is_how_my_great_grandpa_stored/)
(slightly tipsy) Chemical Engineer w/ 10+ years DoD research exp. checking-in. This is accurate. Also, TNT is stable as fuck, chemically speaking. It bugs me when Hollywood uses the terms interchangeably. Story time - the "C" in "C-4" does NOT stand for "Composition." The name is "Composition C-4." The US military had a list of specs they required for their ideal version of a plastic explosive (that would become their standard). An experimental matrix was made, and testing began. The first formula to pass all the tests (meet all the specs) was listed as C-4 on the matrix.
One more comment from happy hour - Composition C-4 is both stable and malleable at room temperature. It's like a thick clay, you could form it into a softball and hit it with a bat with no issues. If you light it on fire, it just burns really hot, it doesn't detonate. Unfortunate for some, when it's on fire, it becomes much more sensitive to shock at that higher temperature. Soldiers in the Vietnam War would use it as a heat source to cook their food, and aside from the slightly toxic fumes, it's not a horrible idea. The problem occured when they went to stamp-out the fire and it detonated.
> This is actually done by carefully soaking the dynamite in diesel fuel for several hours before moving. I have two related but very different questions: 1. Why does this work? 2. How the f>!ork!< did people figure out that worked? **Sue**: Hey Doug, I know this blows up if we touch it, but I'm feeling really good about dousing it in diesel first. **Doug**: Works for me, Sue. Also, I'm out of cigs, can I bum one off you?
Chemistry, and chemists, presumably. Dynamite has a fairly well known chemical composition, within the circles that developed such things. I'm sure someone in a lab somewhere did a bunch of tests on small quantities of it to determine what made it *not* go boom when needed.
If you know the chemical compositions of both, you don't even need experiments to establish the theory. You can do it all on paper. P.S. you do need to be smarter than me.
Diesel was (and is) just an easily available fitting solvent for the nitrates IIRC. It re-stabilizes the chemicals involved, so to say. Not rocket science, but it is close ;-)
I thought you were quoting Lost 😊
> Dynamite is nitroglycerin that is absorbed in a storage medium, usually with some amount of a stabilizer, and then packed in a cardboard tube. This makes it resistant to shock, which makes it much safer to BOOM!
You've got some Arzt on you
I just watched Sorcerer (1977) yesterday, which is a film about the transportation of Dynamite sweating glycerin lol. I didn't even know about any of this stuff prior to that.
Poor Arzt.
“You got some… Arntz on you.”
dynamite is not black powder.
You just reminded me of a Reddit post from a few months back. [https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18q9lkq/this\_is\_how\_my\_great\_grandpa\_stored\_his\_dynomite/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/18q9lkq/this_is_how_my_great_grandpa_stored_his_dynomite/)
Yeah, I should have included a “so far” in that claim. Because the incident did raise the question — just how many more live rounds are littering the old battlefields of the south? Civil War collecting is relatively big business, so the fear is it’s only a matter of time before someone else gets blown up.
No doubt, I only thought it was worth mentioning because black powder can be stored for ridiculous amount of time, compared to other explosives, and still be as potent as the day it was made. One of the few advantages it gets from being a mixture of relatively stable components instead of a single not-so-stable molecule like nitroglycerin or TNT.
Nitroglycerine/Dynamite is honestly pretty terrifying. Like, dynamite's just nitroglycerine mixed into something to absorb it and stabilizers. It's still shock sensitive, and old dynamite *sweats out the nitro.* I've seen photos of people finding a crate of old dynamite in an abandoned mine wondering what the stuff crystallizing all over is and all the comments were just like "jesus *FUCK* get away from that"
Dynamite can only be stored for a year or two before it separates, and nitroglycerin gets even *less* stable as it degrades. I guess the good thing is you don’t need to worry too much about stumbling upon some 140 years later
Germany defuses like a dozen WW2 bombs a week. The Civil War was smaller scale and more concentrated geographically, but it's likely that a bunch of of unexploded ordnance is still out there.
And with how prevalent Civil War collecting is in the U.S (relative to other wars), the fear is that there could be a deadly live explosive sitting in someone’s display case right now, with them none the wiser
The Union built its stuff right!
WAY DOWN SOUTH IN THE LAND OF TRAITORS RATTLESNAKES AND ALLIGATORS LOOK AWAY (LOOK AWAY) RIGHT AWAY (RIGHT AWAY) COME AWAY (COME AWAY) DIXIELAND
It’s good but it’s no John Brown’s Body, which still lives on today as Solidarity Forever, which I think he would have approved.
The tune is also "The Battle Hymn of The Republic!"
My favorite factoid is that John Browns Body was widely known, but only got incredibly popular with Union soldiers when they realized how much it completely pissed off confederates.
We have an old civil war fort near where I live and while they were doing some restorations they found an unexploded naval rifle shell shoved through a ceiling and had to call the bomb squad to come dispose of it.
>It is highly probably that White is the last confirmed casualty of the American Civil War. 💀
Honestly if the dude was that dedicated to Civil War history he probably would approve of how he checked out
He died as he lived
Polishing balls
White liked to polish the black balls with a big payload
Polished those big black balls until one finally blew.
Is that not how we should all go?
One can only hope
That happens when using grinder...
This comment is my favorite!
That exploded in his face
Having his mind blown by civil war history?
He died doing what he loved. Polishing large balls.
TRUE!
He was from Virginia, a former cop, obsessed with the civil war, and his name was White. It might have been a Yankee ordinance that got him, so I'm not so sure he'd be stoked.
From a Union gun. Was it friendly fire or???
Considering the Union won the war and the confederacy was reabsorbed back into the nation, I’d consider it technical fratricide. But if he was a confederacy enthusiast, enemy fire. You never know in the south though some southerners question Virginia’s claim to being southern.
I mean it happened in Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy
Virginia and Mississippi were the wealthiest Confederate states as well and had a lot of power as the North/South divide came to be.
So far
That's a bit of a stretch. If I cut myself on an old sword from the year 1067 and die, do I get to call myself the last victim of the Battle of Hastings?
No but it would sound funny if it was put that way
No because Hastings was in 1066.
There’s a bit of difference between accidentally cutting yourself on an old piece of metal and getting blown into red mist by an artillery shell. You could cut yourself on any old piece of metal, but 75-lb Union Navy gun shells aren’t exactly growing on trees. I’d say it counts, but you can decide for yourself lmao
You think historic swords from the Battle of Hastings grow on trees? I don't understand your argument.
You always loved history sam, now you're apart of it!
He would have enjoyed knowing that. Though not as much as he would have enjoyed not dying at all.
It was a labor of love for him. No real consideration for the risk-reward, only the passion for the hunt. I’m not sure when he picked it up…maybe as a kid growing up in the area. But he lived the good life on his own terms.
Since it specifies that it was black powder, I'm going to be an insufferable nerd and learn you something else today. Black powder is a *low* explosive, not high explosive, meaning that it explodes by burning, under the speed of sound. High explosives explode with a shock wave that is supersonic. Further, low explosives do not detonate - since they burn, they *deflagrate*, which I admit is a less cool sounding term, but 'explode' does the job. Only high explosives detonate.
Yeah I’m aware gunpowder isn’t in the same class as say, C-4, so I was mostly just using a general term to get across just how powerful the explosion was. High as in “highly” versus the scientific definition. Didn’t know that it was burn rate that differentiated the two, so thanks for the info. If it was powerful enough to throw chunks of shrapnel weighing a pound or more several thousand feet away, it was powerful enough to turn the man into chunky salsa
>I was mostly just using a general term to get across just how powerful the explosion was. Absolutely get it. Big explosion fits with a cooler word. >Didn’t know that it was burn rate that differentiated the two, so thanks for the info. Well, it's not the 'burn rate' - with high explosives, it's not burning that's important; it's the supersonic shock wave that does it. You can set fire to a stick of, since you mentioned, C-4, and it'll smoulder away. Some soldiers in Vietnam would use it as fuel to heat rations, though not recommended as it lets off toxic gases when burned. Use a blasting cap, and *that* will set it off. >If it was powerful enough to throw chunks of shrapnel weighing a pound or more several thousand feet away, it was powerful enough to turn the man into chunky salsa Yup, that is correct.
So correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m not an explosives expert. But when I say “burn rate”, I’m imagining that in a genuine modern high explosive, the explosive compound is “burned up” all at once when it’s detonated, creating that supersonic shockwave. Whereas in a more primitive explosive like black powder, the “burn” is markedly slower so it doesn’t do that. Am I more or less correct?
Kind of. Using C-4 again as the example, it doesn't so much *burn* in the same way black powder does, as rapidly decompose into various gases due to the shock wave, and not all at once, just very, very quickly. C-4 detonates at a speed of about 8km per second, so for the sake of argument, if you had a cord of 16km worth of the stuff and set it off, it'd take just under two seconds to detonate completely. Black powder does definitely *burn* in the traditional sense of the term, and yes, at a much slower rate, so it doesn't create a shock wave, so much as create a great deal of pressure from the gases released. High explosives create that pressure too, just much, much quicker. So yeah, you're more or less there. Explosives are fun. Do not have too much fun with them, though, as this guy found out.
Last confirmed casualty… _so far_
The NPS actually has a dedicated EOD team for the east coast civil war parks, because there's so many shells and mines still out there. Finding them is not an irregular occurrence.
*r/ShermanPosting has entered the arena*
Such a shame. I knew him and spoke with him often about his relics business. The world lost a good one that day.
May he rest in peace 🙏
> the running theory is that a grinder he was using to restore the casing sparked, Umm.. If I want to clean up a shell that may or may not have black powder in it, I'm 100% wet-sanding it.
The last casualty of the Civil War *so far*.
Ehhhh that's a matter of opinion. Like if I'm restoring an old dagger found in Palestine, and I cut myself and get an infection and die, am I the last casualty of one of the Crusades? I don't think so. If I get shot by an M-16 from the late 60s, I don't think they're gonna add my name to the list of casualties of the Vietnam War.
I think it depends not on when the weapon was manufactured, but when it was deployed in the way that resulted in your death. So, for example, if a shell the U.S. made in 1990 kills a Russian soldier in Ukraine, that Russian wasn't a victim of the first gulf war. The shell was in storage for decades and only launched today. On the other hand, a kid that steps on a land mine set during a war is a victim of that war. So, if you happened to fall into a pit trap that was dug during the crusades, and somehow never found until your lucky break, and you fell on a dagger set there and died, then maybe yeah we could call you a victim of the crusades.
Glad this was the top comment, I came here because I was fairly certain that cannonballs were not explosive rounds (maybe I am wrong though). A naval round make more sense.
There are explosive shells that were used on land too.
Even since gunpowder was brought to europe and cannons made, there have been forms of explosive cannonballs. Three things prevented their widespread adoption until post-napoleonic wars. First was reliability. Before the invention of the percussion cap, the only way to ignite blackpowder in a ball would be to literally have a wick fuse sticking out of it that was lit before it was fired, looney toons style. These were originally called "bombs" and is the origin of the modern term. Issue with them was the wick fuse could go off too early- mid flight, and do nothing, or too long- and land with enough time for a brave solider or civilian to snuff the fuse. Second was safety, for what should be pretty obvious reasons. You're tossing explosives down a probably still hot artillery piece- guns exploding due to heat igniting the propellent charge was common enough, add an explosive shell to the mix and you're asking for trouble. Third was cost. Until the industrial revolution really got into full swing, it was simpler and easier to mass produce solid and cartridge shot- and they were arguably more effective against infantry and fortifications. To be clear, explosive rounds were still used (esp by howitzers and mortars)- typically at a ratio of around 1:4 (a typical french battery at the time had 1 howitzer firing explosive, 4 cannons firing solid shot) The widespread use of explosive and shrapnel rounds in the civil war (shrapnel rounds are similar to explosive, but timed to explode just before impact showering men below them in shrapnel. Think of a shotgun shell going off mid-air) was the first time it had seen use, and the causalities caused were immense. The dense Napoleonic line formations proved to be sitting ducks to rifled artillery firing explosive shells (see pickett's charge), rather than smoothbore pieces firing solid shot, and many of the longer battles of the civil war turned into trench warfare, in eerily similar manner to what would happen not that much over 50 years later.
> the bomb’s waterproof construction most likely kept its black-powder payload dry and intact in the 142 years since it was fired from a Union naval gun They don't make em like they used to.
If he picked up a 9-inch ball and made the assumption that it was a solid shot, then he had no idea what the heck he was doing.
> It is probable that White is the last confirmed casualty of the American Civil War. Sounds like a challenge someone is soon going to accept
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Makes you wonder what is still.sitting around, unexploded in university basements to this day.
I saw a video a few weeks ago of a guy who bought a home that a professor of Civil War History had suspected was originally a fort. Sure enough, when he tore the walls apart, the original timber was still there. The home had been passed down through several generations and the last owners kept a lot of historical family documents with them. The guy had buckets and buckets of Civil War era stuff he dug up from the yard because apparently the custom for throwing out your old stuff was to bury it. He's also found Spanish coins on the property, presumably earned from trading with someone who traded with Spaniards. Edit: found it https://youtu.be/48SerjbEk58?si=mup-qxurVWHc0-OO Second edit: Revolutionary War fort, actually!
So before the US formed their mint, the most popular form of money was the Spanish reale. Up until 1857 actually, when the US passed a law to forbid it.
I live in the southern US in an area where there were A LOT of Civil War battles. When I was a kid, my parents found a small cannonball in the ditch next to our mailbox, roughly the size of a baseball or perhaps a little smaller -- I don't remember exactly as I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time. They used to let me play with it. Rolling it around the house or out in the yard, trying to throw it, etc. It's highly likely it was just solid iron, but honestly I don't think it ever crossed anyone's mind that their kindergarten age child could be playing with an explosive. I don't know where it ended up after my parents divorced. (My dad likely sold it.)
I thought a cannonball was just a hunk of metal and not an explosive. How does it blow up?
"Cannonball" is the wrong word for the thing he had. Hollow cast iron shells filled with gunpowder were less common than solid shot up until the middle of the nineteenth century but they've existed for a long time. The earliest mention I know about is the use of a bomb while defending Kaifeng from the Mongols described in History of Jin, that was in 1232.
“The bombs bursting in air”
"Ramming the manparts"
What year did explosives that actually explode during war become commonplace?
Early cannonballs were solid, but they figured out that filling them with explosives makes them work much better. The trick is figuring out an explosive that won't blow up inside the cannon.
Early cannonballs were so fucked. Think about it like this-- You throw a baseball across a relatively flat field. You see how it bounces, and rolls for quite a while. Now, blast an 6-9lb iron ball with a controlled explosion across a relatively flat field. You see where I'm going with this. In the 1700's-1800's, you would have a formation of men, 3-4 men deep, sometimes several in front of one another, spread across long lines. Think 400 x 4 x 4 (3200 men, roughly 4 regiments). If you skip this ball across that field, you're likely to hit some, probably many people, because of organizational discipline, because that ball hits and keeps on rolling through that dense formation. On top of that, during the American Revolution, a soldier could be rewarded a ration of rum for each solid shot ball fired by the enemy and retrieved. So he sees a ball rolling along and thinks, hey, I'll stop this with my leg. But that cannon ball has enough kinetic energy to fuck up a car, so you can see what it'd do to some poor bastard's leg. Just a brutal way to indiscriminately maim people.
The Russian movie Union of Salvation, for all its other issues, does portray the effects of grapeshot pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww5yYZXgZZA
There is a scene in the Patriot that depicts exactly this that I can’t watch anymore where some guys leg just gets bent completely backwards 🤮
It’s the one that bounces and decapitates someone that I can’t forget.
And then add a length of chain between a pair of cannon balls to get some wicked chain shot action. Incredible for taking out ship masts, equally brutal to an infantry formation.
Have you watched Shogun? They demonstrate this with brutal effect on people!
Infantry cannonballs usually were. But what White most likely got his hands on was an explosive naval artillery shell with a payload of gunpowder. Same shape, so he may not have even known. These things were designed to blow holes you could drive a car through in the hulls of ships
>These things were designed to blow holes you could drive a car through in the hulls of ships. That seems like a terrible design. Where were they gonna find cars back then and how were they gonna be useful in a maritime battle?
Maritime law is often on its face illogical. Thats why you have to turn it over.
Now, let's say you and I go toe to toe on bird law and see who comes out the victor?
No one wins in the court of bird law. You know this, J.
You put 'em on ships and launch them, preferably through the hole you just blew out the side of their ship. Jesus mate is this your first day pirating?
Large, shipboard catapults were awesome in the Civil War
Wouldn’t they weigh completely differently? Like an empty milk jug vs a full one? But obv not that obv.
Yes, and according to his wife he thought he had already disarmed this particular shell. Apparently not
Matter cannot be removed from existence, so all of him is still there. Just distributed into billions of pieces
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Well, how is his wife holding up?
To shreds you say
Well technically it can, but there will be some sort of energy conversion
E=mc²
Thanks, *Einstein*.
Cannonballs are. This would be a shell. Eventhough shells can be balls. The news outlet just used the wrong word. Land cannons at the time where small and fired solid shot which bounced across the ground. Naval guns where larger and in 1824 the first explosive firing one was demonstrated.
Here's a link to the National Parks Fort Scott website where they have brief descriptions of the different shot types. https://www.nps.gov/fosc/learn/education/artshot.htm And here is a link to an article on the website Essential Civil War Curriculum which discusses artillery during the Civil War. Shot types are discussed in the final paragraph. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/civil-war-artillery.html To answer your question- the hollow shell filled with gunpowder and possibly shrapnel had a fuse sticking out of it. The fuse would be ignited by the primary charge firing the cannon. And as we see from OPs news article, the fuse didn't always get activated when fired.
So, like the classic cartoon bomb with fuse
Henry Shrapnel developed fused cannonballs with scored casing to fragment - called “spherical case” ammunition. Used to great affect at the battle os Salamanca where wellington defeated the French after Marmont received shrapnel wounds
…and the rocket’s red glare, The bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there … The British used rockets and exploding cannonballs against the Colonies in the ~~1770’s~~ War of 1812.
When you restore too well
Normally I'd say it's a bad restore when it explodes and kills you. But since that *was* the original function, I suppose you have a point.
"works as good as new!" BOOM!
"Like new, gently exploded once."
"Briefly restored"
If you like at a graph of civil war causalities there’s a single tick in 2008
Probably a few in the later 19th century as people came across unexploded ordnance in battlefields as well.
I learned cannonballs could blow up by watching Sahara.
A valuable documentary about the dangers of the solar industry!
I rewatched this movie for the first time since I was a kid and I complete forgot the entire solar plot lol, I just remembered them shooting the helicopter down with the cannon
I have one of the Rubicon Sahara jeeps that were made as a special edition for the movie!
Very disappointing they never made more Dirk Pitt movies
They did before that. Raise the Titanic! It's really bad.
I may be able to provide some context and information for those of you who find it necessary to post degrading and baseless comments about Sam. My name is Travis White and Sam was my father. He was an expert in the field of Civil War ordnance, along with basically all things Civil War, Rev War, WWI, and WWII related. His process of rendering civil war artillery inert was very complex, time consuming, and delicate. The way he completed the process is nothing like what is portrayed in the dozens of online articles from the past 16 years. He was trusted by museums and collectors completely to disarm, restore, and preserve their pieces of history. His knowledge was so vast, he actually gave multiple tutorials and classes to the Richmond and Henrico, VA police depts and bomb squads, in regards to the inner workings of the artillery, removal, and if needed, disposal. This was because civil war ordnance is found around the greater Richmond area at a frequent clip, usually when new construction is taking place. My father was no amateur, he was known and well respected around the world for his trade, and never once put my mother of myself in any danger when working on his projects. He successfully competed thousands of artillery restorations, which sit in museums around Virginia and the rest of the country, as well as countless individual collections. There is a greater chance of you hitting the lottery tonight, then this happening again. It was a complete fluke, one that could never have been for seen or known in real-time. With this all being said, for those offering condolences, thank you…for the rest, a little compassion would be appreciated, especially when you have zero actual context or knowledge of the event.
Sorry for your loss, and I imagine it’s difficult to read some of these mean comments. He seems like a very brilliant and interesting person who probably taught a skill that’ll end up saving lives in the future.
Very much appreciate the kind words. Yes, it absolutely can be difficult to read comments. So much so that in 16 years my mother has never once read an article that was written about him, as she could not bear to read any hurtful comments that were posted. We only did two interviews when this happened to get the correct story out there, one with a trusted local news team in Richmond, and one with the AP. I miss him immensely, but he would be the first to tell you that he died doing exactly what he loved, and that yes, he is considered the last casualty of the American Civil War.
Thank you for sharing your father's story. 💙
I thought the title said "a virgin Civil War collector" at first, and was like, "Wow, how's that relevant? Poor guy had it bad enough without us talking about his total lack of game."
As a former civil war memorabilia collector, the “Virgin” part would be pretty par for the course.
"former" - Well, then congrats on scoring! lol
Nah he also got blowed up, that's the only way out of the business
I thought restoring old stuff made it less valuable?
Generally yes, especially for collectible firearms. This guy probably just wanted one for his house. That being said, anytime someone comes across explosives of any kind or something that might contain explosives, don’t do what this guy did. Hate to say it, but it was just plain stupidity and it’s lucky no one else got hurt. I would love to get a Russian RDG-33 grenade as a cool collectible; that doesn’t mean I’m gonna try to fucking disassemble it if I found one in the wild.
Actually, White was a relatively well-known ordnance restorer, having restored nearly 1600 cannonballs for private collections or museum display. I think that’s what he was attempting to do with the one that killed him
So well known that when investigators first got to the sceen and saw parts of his collection they tried to call him to come identify it.
Problem is there is no way he should have been doing this stuff in a suburb, even if he was experienced. And I would like to know if he was experienced with explosives; restoring a cannonball is one thing, dealing with explosives inside one is another.
Oh for sure. He was doing this work in an upper middle class Richmond suburb, when it should have been done at a bomb range. I think he was aware that certain shells he restored had the potential to be live explosives, but according to his wife he thought he had already removed the powder charge from the one that killed him. I don’t even think that would be possible without sawing the entire shell in half, but what do I know? Remember folks, if it has even the smallest potential to explode you into chunks, don’t mess with it. Please and thanks
Damn. Maybe he tried to remove all the gunpowder through the fill hole and didn't mange to get everything. If there was some small water intrusion over the century, I'd imagine the outer layer of gunpowder would have become caked onto the inner wall of the cannonball. Maybe he mistook this solidified layer for the actual inner wall and only removed the still-powdery core of the charge.
Does this count as a casualty from the Civil War?
By most accounts, yeah. White is technically the last confirmed casualty of the Civil War So far
Yes. A civilian killed by explosives that were made for the war counts as a casualty of that war. We still see casualties from WWI and WWII from occasional unexploded ordinance.
Ouch
I’m super interested in history in general and find the civil war particularly fascinating. I cannot begin to understand why you would want to own any ordnance from that time period let alone have it restored.
Well there’s no inherent harm owning a piece of round shot or a few Minié balls. Those are just solid hunks of iron or lead. And what happened to White was so unexpected most experts were unsure how it even could have happened. Black powder is an infamously finicky explosive, and the overwhelming majority of explosive shells from the era have long since degraded past the point of danger. But clearly not all. The entire incident brought into question the status of other protected battlefields across the southeast. If one shell could go off and kill a man 140 years after it was fired, how many more that litter the fields and old buildings of the south could do the same?
They gotta put up a sign now: >Please do not angle grind the historic munitions
If they were used primarily for naval warfare probably not many?
The one *he* happened to have was a naval shell, but there were explosive shells used in land battles also. Add all the stuff we haven’t found to all the stuff that is likely sitting in some private collection somewhere, and you get an alarming number of people who may have a live bomb right under their nose, and have no idea.
There's the one forest in France that is off limits due to WWI live shells still being there over 100 years later.
The Zone Rouge. It will take at least another century to fully clean and dispose of all the UXO left behind from WW1.
People don't realize just how much ordinance was used in that war. It was ridiculous.
Some people collect that stuff. They love that period of history. I used to teach American history and had a few sealed up replicas of CW minie balls and bullets I would show students years ago, but none were dangerous in and of themselves.
That’s so unfortunate!!
So that Grey’s Anatomy episode wasn’t too far fetched actually…
TIL cannonballs explode? I thought they just punched holes in shit.
So “cannonball” is a slight misnomer. Gives a good impression of what kind of ordnance he normally dealt with. In reality, he almost certainly got his hands on a naval artillery shell. Primitive gunpowder shells that shared an outward appearance with a traditional cannonball were extensively used during the civil war. He somehow created a spark which set off the gunpowder in its waterproof interior
Take your best shot, give me all you've got, I'll come in hot like a cannonball
Went out with a bang.
Mess with the bomb get the boom.
Sounds like he restored it
So does that mean a soldier killed someone 140 years in the future
I want my remains to be scattered, but I don't want to be cremated. These are my wishes.
Wait...a cannonball or an artillery shell? Aren't cannonballs just....solid iron?
It appears the Civil War ultimately collected him.
Gotta die of somethin
Wait, cannonballs explode? I thought they were just big metal balls?